CapMan Oyj (CAPMAN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A very good morning to you, all, and welcome to CapMan's full year results for the year 2020. My name is Joakim Frimodig. I'm the CEO of the company. The year 2020 was exceptional in many ways, exceptional due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has affected us all. It has affected the societies that we live in and the business environment. And also, it has had its impact on CapMan. I'm glad that in these exceptional times, CapMan was able to stay on its chosen strategic path and that we were able to complete a number of important projects during last year. These projects lay a good foundation for this year and also for several years to come. While our full year result fall short of our original targets and also short of our long-term ambitions and strategic levels, I'm happy with the way in which we ended the year. We report a strong fourth quarter with an EBIT of EUR 10 million, which puts us in a very good position heading into this year with a good direction overall in our business. Let me start by giving you some highlights of last year. Our assets under management are currently at an all-time high of EUR 3.8 billion. During the last 6 months of last year, this figure grew by EUR 750 million or 20%. That's a good number. And we expect further growth in this year. Some of the important projects behind this growth number are the Nordic Real Estate III fund and the Growth II fund that we have advanced. Nordic III Real Estate fund, we have currently raised EUR 535 million to -- that's exceeding our original target of EUR 500 million and fundraising still continues. We expect to take in some further capital in the first quarter of this year. The fund is already the largest ever in CapMan's history, and this fundraising is backed by a very solid investor demand. In the fourth quarter, we also closed our Growth II fund. It's closed at EUR 97 million. Also here, we exceed our original target, which was EUR 85 million. This was a very fast fundraising, and a strong investor demand here as well. With the growing assets under management and successful fundraising projects, we have seen a positive development in management fees. They have grown by 17% overall in 2020. And we have been able to maintain a good cost control, which means that the profit based on fees in this segment has grown by some 50% during last year. Towards the end of last year, we also saw a strong rebound in fair values. As you might recall, in the first quarter, there was a significant negative development in fair values. We saw an improvement in the second and third quarter. And now in the fourth quarter, we see a really strong rebound. Fair value is plus EUR 7 million in Q4 and plus EUR 4.4 million for the year as a whole. So adding all this together, we indeed have a strong finish to exceptional year. In the fourth quarter, we reported an EBIT of EUR 10 million, and that brings our full year EBIT for 2020 to EUR 12.3 million. As you might recall, CapMan reports 3 business segments: our Management Company business, where we earn management fees and carried interest income; we have our Service business, where we receive fees from sold services; and we have our own balance sheet investments, the Investment business, where we receive returns from investments and fair value changes. And if we look at last year's results through these 3 segments and some highlights from there, when it comes to the Management Company business, as I said, we have seen continued fee growth of 17%. And also here, we have been able to uphold good cost efficiency, which means that the fee-based profitability in this segment has grown substantially last year. We did not have a lot of carried interest income in 2020. The market was not optimal for that. And therefore, the segment turnover, as a whole, fall short of the year 2019. And that, as I said, is due to the lower carried interest income. But the profitability based on fees is solid, and the segment's EBIT is EUR 9.1 million and comes almost 100% from recurring revenues. In the transaction -- or in the Service business, we had low transaction-based fee income in the second and third quarter, but we saw an improvement there in the fourth quarter. And we also have had some negative impacts from the dollar-euro exchange rate due to their impact on long-term receivables in this segment. This has affected the top line and the EBIT in the second half of the year by approximately EUR 1 million. But overall, recurring fees have continued to grow in the service Business by 14% last year. Turnover down due to the reasons mentioned before, by some 28%, but EBIT and EBIT margins are solid, so EUR 5 million EBIT with an approximately 50% margin. And here also, we have been increasing the share of recurring turnover. It was close to 80% last year. In the fourth quarter, we saw a positive development in most of our funds and also most of the underlying assets in these funds. And overall, the fair value change was plus EUR 7 million in the fourth quarter. And therefore, we bring the full year fair value change to a positive EUR 4.4 million for last year. Happy with the development following a challenging start to 2020, especially on this front. And when we add the different segments together and look at the group figures, they look like this. So turnover, EUR 43 million for last year. That's EUR 6 million short of the year before, and that difference is almost fully explained by the lower carried interest income. You can see the operating profit development, so negative in the first quarter, then a smaller rebound in the second and third quarter and now really a strong positive impact in the fourth quarter. So that brings the full year EBIT to EUR 12.3 million, but of course, well short of last year's level, mainly explained by lower fair values and lower carried interest income. And if I further break down the full year EBIT to different components, you can see, as I already mentioned, the management fee profit is developing very strongly last year. The lower carried interest income and then the service fee profit, which is below the year '19, but picking up towards the end of the year and with a solid good margin overall. Investment business, EUR 4 million, as mentioned. And then the segment other & eliminations, minus EUR 5.7 million. Worth noting, it includes about EUR 1.7 million of expenses related to the termination of the performance share plan and also some reorganization costs. Taking out these items, the other costs are below 2019 level. If we take a slightly longer perspective and look at our top line development and also the development of our fee-based profitability, you can see here a 3-year development and an average growth rate in fees of about 16% average on an annual basis. And I'm particularly happy to say that our fee-based profitability has continued to grow. And overall, we've quadrupled our fee profits in the last 3 years and average annual growth rate has been around 65%. Overall, this fee profitability gives us a solid base for our business, and we expect this positive trend to continue over coming years. Another thing we have been closely following is the development of recurring turnover and also cost efficiency. And the recurring turnover has grown steadily during the last 3 years, on average, 16%, and grown also during this pandemic year of 2020. The red line in the graph indicates our fixed expense level. And you can see that we have been able to maintain a good cost control during recent quarters. And if we look at the ratio of recurring turnover to fixed costs, that has developed positively and now stands at 130%. This growth in recurring turnover and good cost efficiency gives stability and predictability of our earnings. Then some words about our balance sheet. It is solid, and we have a good liquidity. So equity -- book equity was EUR 113 million at year-end. Our equity ratio stood at 52%, and we have liquid assets of EUR 58 million. In addition to the liquid assets, we also have an undrawn credit limit of EUR 40 million, and that is not in use at the moment. In the fourth quarter, we also raised a new senior bond, a bond that matures in 2025. The size of that was EUR 50 million. So we extended the overall maturity of our debt profile. Combined, this gives us this balance sheet a good financial stability and also, as you can see, a strong liquidity. Then if we look at the allocation of the balance sheet, you can see the end of 2019 compared to end of 2020, and at the end of last year, we had EUR 116 million of private market investments and then a significant cash and bank of EUR 58 million. And as you might recall, we have said that we want to have the ratio of private market investments to total investments around 75% to 80%. So we are close to the levels. Here is a long-term view of the change in allocation and the mix of our own investments in the balance sheet. And I think what I really want to highlight here is the increased diversification, and this diversification comes with the development in our overall business. So you can see that we have own investments in the real estate, infrastructure, growth equity, buyout and also some external funds quite evenly distributed now compared to the situation a few years back. We also have undrawn commitments to new funds of some EUR 109 million. You can see the split of that commitment between the different investment areas. And you can see that, that will also give even more balance to the allocation when those commitments are called and invested through our balance sheet. Then some words about the strategy and our vision. CapMan, we want to be a North European private asset powerhouse. And what that vision is built upon is strong value creation, broad access to capital and also an attractive and innovative offering in the private market space. So we have been expanding our offering to cover the private asset market broadly in the Nordics. We are present in private equity, real estate and infrastructure, and we want to be the best value creator in this segment. This, we believe, we can achieve by having the best dedicated investment teams and also getting the most out of the CapMan platform and the overall setup that we have in place. With top performance, we can attract capital to our business, we can broaden the sources of capital, and we can, in particular, access international capital sources. And with top value creation access to capital, we can also introduce attractive new solutions, new products to the market as we have done, and that's in CapMan's DNA to be a pioneer and innovator in this space. So when we have all these elements in place, then we will have a virtuous circle that generates growth for us over the long term. And these are the elements that we have been developing in recent years. We operate in an attractive market. The private asset market is growing. It has threefolded in the last 12 years. And still, it's only 12% of the total market when you also include the public investments in the total figure. So there is still room to grow. The market has diversified. New strategies have been introduced. Infra growth, private debt, real estate have become strong segments, alongside traditional private equity. Why has this market been growing? Well, it's because it has been making very good returns to the investors. So depending on different studies, you can look at different figures. But roughly, you can say that the returns have been almost doubled to that of listed stock in recent years. And also, this market is attracting new investors that we can see at CapMan as well. So of our current investors, about 25% are new to us in the last year. So all of these things combined create an interesting and growing private market. And these are the trends upon which we have built our own strategy. So we have a broad offering in the Nordic private asset market. We have broadened that in recent years. The key for us to have the best value creators working for CapMan have strong investment teams. And there, I'm happy to say that we have been making some very strong recruitments in the last few years. We want to be an innovator in the market. We want to introduce new solutions. As I said, that's part of our DNA. We want to attract new investors, and that we have been doing at CapMan. We have been looking in 2 directions. We have been reaching out to large international investors, at the same time, also creating models to attract smaller local investors who have an interest to enter this market. And of course, making top quartile returns is the core of our being. That's where we really add the value. So with all of these components together and based on the trends I described, lay the foundation of CapMan's growth strategy. Here are some practical examples of what the growth strategy has looked like in recent years when it comes to introduction of new investment strategies and products, may be some highlights from last year. I already mentioned the Nordic Real Estate III fund currently standing at EUR 535 million. We have introduced special situations as a new investment strategy to the market. We closed our second Growth fund at EUR 97 million. We expanded our mandate from BVK to invest in residential real estates in Nordics. We have a new mandate on the infra side, and we have also restructured our Service business. So a lot of things happening over the last years and also during the year 2020. What this has driven is a growth in assets under management. You can see here a very long time series from the year 2000 until 2020. And as I said in the beginning, our assets under management are now at a record level of EUR 3.8 billion, and we expect this trend to continue this year. I also mentioned that we have been reaching out to new investor groups. If you look at the total assets under management, you can see that the share of investors outside the Nordic area has grown substantially. It's close to 50% of our total assets under management, and this has been a strong trend during recent years, a trend, particularly in the real estate and infra business, where we have been attracting large international investors. And if you look at the breakdown of assets under management by investor type, you can see that pension funds formed the largest part of the share. But also there's a share of trusts, family offices and private individuals currently standing at 13%, but growing fast. If we look ahead and think about the growth drivers for CapMan, you could, in a way, split them into 3 components. So we have some established strategies where we grow the existing products. A good example of that is our Nordic Real Estate strategy, where we have said raised our third fund. The first fund was about EUR 270 million. The second fund was EUR 440 million. And now we are in excess of EUR 500 million, a good example of how a successful strategy can develop as part of the CapMan family. We also have a number of recently launched and emerging strategies that we are still actively developing. Some of them are already maturing and taking their place in the CapMan family, such as infrastructure, but we also have open-ended real estate funds and for example, special situations, as new opportunities that we are developing and seeking growth from. And then also adding to the portfolio, completely new products, and we are looking to launch at least one new product during 2021 and are advanced in our business development efforts on this front. And as I said, we look for growth in the assets under management in 2021, that's driven by fundraising. And you can see fundraising initiatives for this year on this slide. On the real estate side, we are finalizing the third value-add fund in the first quarter. We have the Nordic Property Income Fund and the hotel fund, which are open-ended structures, where we are looking to take in new capital. And also, we're looking to launch a new real estate product towards the latter part of this year. On the private equity front, we are finalizing the fundraising for our latest Buyout fund, and we are also in the market to raise capital for our Special Situations fund. On the credit side, we have the third Nest fund in fundraising in the early parts during 2021. And also a large part of our first Infra fund is already committed. Some 70% of that is committed, which means that we are likely to look at the second Infra fund fundraising already during the latter part of this year. And also we are constantly looking for opportunities to make co-investments with our LPs opportunities for mandates alongside and complementing our fund business that we will continue with. CapMan's objective is to pay an annually increasing dividend to our shareholders. The CapMan Board of Directors will propose to our AGM this spring that a total of EUR 0.14 per share would be paid to shareholders partly as dividend and partly as equity repayment. Total amount would be about EUR 22 million. You can see the development in the distribution to our shareholders growing with this proposal for the eighth year in a row. Dividend is an important part of CapMan's equity story, and we further want to develop this. And as of 2021, the proposal to the Annual General Meeting is that we would pay dividends and distributions to our shareholders twice a year, approximately 6 months apart, to give investors a more stable cash flow and also correspondingly for the company to have a more stable cash flow management also in terms of dividends. Here you can see our long-term financial objectives. We say that we are seeking over 10% growth -- top line growth on average. And if we look now at the last 3 years' average growth, it has been around 16%. Last year, 2020, the growth was close to 0, so bringing this average down. But if you look at the long-term trend, we are on a good level here. In terms of return on equity, we say that our target is over 20%. The average now stands at 11% during the last 3 years. So still work to be done here. We need a stronger carried interest income to reach our target than what we have seen in the recent year. When it comes to equity ratio, the target is to have a solid balance sheet with equity ratio above 60%. And we have, on average, been very close to that target, on average, 58% equity ratio. And as I said, distribution to shareholders with the proposal to the AGM would be growing for the eighth year in a row. Our outlook for 2021, as last year, CapMan does not provide a numerical estimate for 2021. But however, we estimate that our assets under management continue to grow in 2021. And our objective is also to improve the aggregate profitability of the management company and service businesses, excluding items affecting comparability. So maybe to conclude, as we are heading into 2021, we have a fee base that is now strong. It is growing. Our recurring income supports our fee-based profitability growth. Many of our funds hold significant carried interest potential. And with an improving exit market, we should move closer to realizing this potential. Overall, we report a strong end to the exceptional year 2020, and we have a good position, and we are in a good direction heading into 2021. Thank you for your attention.